Polycom Telepresence System Comes With Microsoft Lync Support

Polycom and Microsoft are growing their UC partnership with the Polycom CX7000 telepresence endpoint that will ship with Microsoft's Lync technology on board.

Polycom is bringing
Microsoft's Lync unified-communications platform from the desktop to a full
conference room telepresence system.
Polycom
officials at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles July 11
introduced the CX7000 Unified Collaboration System, a telepresence solution
that offers Microsoft Lync built in. With the tight integration, Lync users
will get the same UC experience they have on their desktops-including presence,
instant messaging, online meetings and content collaboration-on Polycom's
room-based video-collaboration product. They also get a familiar user
interface, according to Polycom and Microsoft officials.

With tight
integration between the Polycom and Microsoft solutions, customers get an
intuitive interface, simplified UC experience and more seamless telepresence.
The solution offers all the Lync features customers want (such as presence,
instant messaging, online meetings and content collaboration) with Polycom's
industry-leading room video-collaboration solutions in a single plug-and-play
system. Polycom has raised the bar for UC with Lync through real-time, group
document collaboration over video, which no other standard-based system enables
today.

"The
power of UC is to eliminate barriers to teamwork and bring people face-to-face,"
Andrew Miller, president and CEO of Polycom, said in a statement. "The new
Polycom CX7000 room telepresence solution, custom-built to integrate with
Microsoft Lync, takes the seamless, highly intuitive experience to a new level
by enabling customers to connect and collaborate how, when and where they
want."
Miller
promised more joint UC offerings in the future. Polycom and Microsoft in August 2010 announced a
partnership to jointly develop and market integrated UC solutions that include
endpoints from Polycom and Microsoft communications technology.
Along with the
CX7000-which had been code named "Rally" and will be available in the fourth
quarter-Polycom also offers other CX endpoints that interoperate with Lync,
including the Polycom UC Intelligent Core infrastructure, other telepresence
offerings and voice endpoints. Polycom engineers are working to ensure that
company devices, including the CX7000, will interoperate with Microsoft's
Office 365 cloud-computing offering through Lync Online.

At the show,
Polycom will demonstrate a number of other technologies that interoperate with
Microsoft offerings, including the Kirk Wireless Solutions products,
SpectraLink 8400 Series of wireless telephones, Polycom's Video Management
Systems and the Open Telepresence Experience 100 solution.
The Microsoft
alliance was the latest in a string of partnerships, including deals last year
with Hewlett-Packard and Avaya.
Polycom has emerged as the top challenger to
Cisco Systems in the highly competitive video-collaboration space. Cisco
bolstered its business last year when it bought rival Tandberg. Polycom has
since expanded its offerings, announcing last month that it was buying HP's
visual-communications portfolio, including the Halo telepresence products.
For its part,
Microsoft also has aggressively partnered with other video-communications
vendors, including LifeSize Communications.
"The
custom-built Polycom CX7000 system has been specifically designed for full
integration with Lync," Kirk Gregersen, senior director of Lync for Microsoft,
said in a statement. "It offers a compelling and intuitive collaboration
experience that bridges UC and enables businesses to be more productive."